• Defining Glasnost

  • Zhores Medvedev (a Soviet dissident, known for calling to attention the Kyshtym Nuclear Disaster, as well as for being a victim of Soviet abuse of mental health professionals as a tool to silence dissent) called the idea of Glasnost "rather ambiguous. It conveys the idea of publicity rather than frankness". In short it is a bureaucratic expression that is ostensibly a half-hearted attempt at the provision of freedom of speech without having to give the breadth of liberty for such freedom - it is a cop-out, in other words.
  • The West, on the other hand, takes Glasnost to refer to "openness" - aligning it with some sense of government accountability that fits with the western expectation of freedom of speech.
  • Lastly, Gorbachev considers Glasnost to be a way of utilizing the mass media of the USSR to dislodge those who had entrenched themselves in positions of power and who were using such positions for their own personal benefit/for benefiting their cronies. (Gibbs).

• What was the situation for that group/institution before Gorbachev became Premier?

  • Prior to Gorbachev, the Politburo was the setting of the good ol boys game of the USSR - the only way to advance past bureaucracy was to either be a bureaucrat, or to have a connection who was a bureaucrat. Furthermore, the state held state secrets, which were de jure unassailable/uncriticizable. By making the state infallible, mistakes were bound to have been made, and covered-up, often at great cost to then public and to the government (the latter financially). For example, the design of the Chernobyl reactors was one such state secret that ended in such a costly manner - the design had numerous fatal flaws, each having the capacity to, under the correct conditions, cause an event of cataclysmic proportions.
    (Gibbs).

• How did that group/institution interpret the application of those policies to it?

  • The highest levels of soviet government were subject to a very strict interpretation of Gorbachev's reforms, given that Gorbachev was the de jure leader of the Soviet federation. Many, especially those in the military, tended to oppose the reforms (as did those who led the individual soviet republics) in part due to an immense culture of secrecy that the USSR was notorious for.
    • Case in point being the Chernobyl incidents of the 1980s. In 1982, one reactor at the plant suffered a catastrophic destruction of its core (though it didn't result in a nuclear excursion) - the event was covered-up, despite the fact that it was fitting with the Soviet modus operandi of covering up anything that makes the state look bad to their citizens. The same site, the CNPP, was the setting of a nuclear event of cataclysmic proportions in 1986, when a nuclear excursion caused the #4 reactor to both melt down and explode - exposing the nuclear core to the atmosphere. The Pripyat firefighters tried to combat the nuclear blaze, but their efforts resulted in further release of radiation. At the site of the excursion, the plant operators, despite all evidence to the contrary - including testimony from people who could see through the hole in the reactor building towards the sky, as well as the quaking of the reactor as its core detonated, operated as though the incident was minor. What they didn't know was that water pipes to the molten core were non-existent, and that the core itself has ceased to exist as it had previously. The mentality that nothing was wrong was indicative of the prevailing Soviet mentality which Gorbachev was trying to change with his reforms. Gorbachev claims that "it was the general consensus of the Politburo that we should openly deliver the information upon receiving it," that the reason that they could not give a statement was because they lacked such information, and that frankly speaking, "nobody knew the truth" about what had happened; nobody knew what would happen (Gorbachev) (The Battle of Chernobyl).

Extract:

"The Politburo did not immediately have appropriate and complete information that would have reflected the situation after the explosion. Nevertheless, it was the general consensus of the Politburo that we should openly deliver the information upon receiving it. This would be in the spirit of the Glasnost policy that was by then already established in the Soviet Union. Thus, claims that the Politburo engaged in concealment of information about the disaster is far from the truth. One reason I believe that there was no deliberate deception is that, when the governmental commission visited the scene right after the disaster and stayed overnight in Polesie, near Chernobyl, its members all had dinner with regular food and water, and they moved about without respirators, like everybody else who worked there. If the local administration or the scientists knew the real impact of the disaster, they would not have risked doing this. In fact, nobody knew the truth, and that is why all our attempts to receive full information about the extent of the catastrophe were in vain. We initially believed that the main impact of the explosion would be in Ukraine, but Belarus, to the northwest, was hit even worse, and then Poland and Sweden suffered the consequences" (Gorbachev).

• How did the Soviet state apply those policies to that group/institution, and what were the effects?

  • Since the government was the Soviet state, its application was as Gorbachev desired it to be, with the exception that there were elements that attempted to halt the reforms. Overall, the effects were that Soviet society became more open, due to Chernobyl accelerating the reforms (per sé). The removal of interfering elements came with the flight of Matias Rust, a German pilot who landed a plane in Red Square. The failure of Soviet Military officers to identify Rust as a foe and hence intercept and shoot him down led to the dismissal of many military officers - of which quite a number opposed the reforms. The landing in Red Square meant that the USSR could not deny the occurrence, and hence the Soviet openness was forced ever further (Connolly).
  • The Politburo was forcibly made more open and honest; issues could not be swept under the rug, rather they had to be acknowledged by a government whose leader valued the truth above all things.
  • The ultimate effect of Glasnost/Perestroika would seem to be the dissolution of the Soviet State, as the reforms afforded the state less and less authority, while permitting more and more dissent which had hitherto been silenced. It was a combination of the reforms as well as the speed with which they occurred that led to the dissolution of the USSR (Chernobyl Disaster: 20 years later).

Extract:

"'Gorbachev did really imagine an honest discussion of the country’s problems in the press and workplaces,' Brown said. But he also likely saw glasnost as an incremental process. The meltdown in Chernobyl, in contrast, was sensational and uncontainable. It wasn’t a systemic issue to be discussed in editorial pages and offices; it was a terrifying, deadly mistake caused by a poorly built and ineptly run facility and exacerbated by a slow, unsophisticated response.

Chernobyl, then, represented a fundamental shift in the relationship between the Soviet citizenry and the state. Before the explosion, most Soviets were not discontented dissidents; they believed in the Soviet system, forgave its flaws, and hoped for a better future within its confines. But after Chernobyl, the system seemed potentially unredeemable—and actively dangerous. In the early days of glasnost, stories of Stalin’s mass murders decades earlier slowly bubbled to the fore, but those generally receded, so far removed were they from everyday life. After Chernobyl, though, every citizen’s safety was at stake" (Stern).

• What was the significance of Gorbachev’s reforms as it pertained to that group/institution?

  • Gorbachev's reforms forced the Soviet state to recognize its shortcomings, that it wasn't an infallible system as it so yearned to be. Viewing Chernobyl within the context of the Glasnost reforms (both of which occurred close in time to the other) makes the case that Chernobyl accelerated Glasnost such that it [the reforms] resulted in the end of the state rather than the reform thereof, as it opened the door to scrutiny of the government in ways which had been impossible in earlier premierships. It was the pressure that outside states put on the USSR in response to the detection of radiation emanating from the Ukranian SSR, and from satellite photographs which discovered the ruined nuclear plant, that was the impetus for reform. Empowered by this, the Soviet citizenry began to challenge more and more questionable aspects of their society. Eventually, the Politburo lost all power over the other SSRs, and the USSR dissolved as a result (Gorbachev; Stern).

Extract:

"Facing a wave of Western criticism, Gorbachev ordered authorities to open up in unprecedented manner. “Journalists suddenly were given access to nuclear officials and doctors treating radiation diseases — people from another world,” said Viktor Loshak, the editor of Ogonyok weekly magazine who was one of a team of Soviet journalists who wrote on the aftermath of the disaster. “That was a powerful push toward greater openness.”

The emboldened Soviet media began probing other areas, exposing Stalinist crimes, economic inefficiency and other troubles.

It became known as “glasnost” or openness, and exposed officialdom to widespread contempt from its own people.

“It was glasnost that destroyed the Soviet Union,” said Gennady Gerasimov, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman under Gorbachev. 'People opened their eyes and saw what kind of a country they were living in, and they looked at the nation’s horrible history.'"